Avalanche’s AVAX token surged 16.91% to $11.23 and later traded near $11.211 after rising from about $8 to a two-day high of $11.796, holding above the former resistance zone at $10.526-$10.53. Volume increased 29.88% to $1.4 billion, and AVAX gained more than 54% during the month as traders anticipated the Helicon mainnet upgrade and rotated into Layer 1 tokens. Helicon is scheduled for September 22, 2026, at 6:00 PM Turkish time, following its July 28 Fuji testnet deployment. The upgrade will implement six Avalanche Community Proposals, including continuous C-Chain execution, automatically renewing staking, a shorter minimum staking duration, a dynamic minimum gas fee, higher validator uptime requirements and changes to the staking reward curve. ACP-285’s reward-system changes will be introduced gradually after activation, and validators must install AvalancheGo v1.15.0 before the hard fork. A sustained hold above $10.526 could support a move toward $13, while a breakdown could expose the 200-day EMA at $8.653 and the weekly support band. Separately, Ava Labs President Charley Cooper said NYSE had tested Avalanche technology for a year without selecting a blockchain, while ICE executive Michael Blaugrund said Avalanche met many of the firm’s requirements. The SEC also released an innovation exemption permitting certain onchain trading of tokenized stocks.